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Yum is dead, long live DNF

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Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#71
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it way more than apt at least. I don't have to use apt-cache, apt-get, apt-kitchensink to do what I want. Its all just subcommands of pacman. Its like vim vs nano - the later has the commands in the shell, but they aren't nearly as fast or power to use as vim if you take the time to learn it. Ironically, I use nano most of the time because I'm not terminal-locked enough to get vim muscle memory, but I use pacm…

You can also use `aptitude`, available on both Debian and Ubuntu. It addresses your complaints and it's the first package I install.

Since apt-1.0 (basically, since jessie), there's also apt(8), which integrates (most of) apt-get and apt-cache.

Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#72
post #2

Serious question, because I am admittedly ignorant to the plusses and minuses of the different package managers. If you're going to swap out: why not switch to apt? What does apt lack that DNF is going to provide? This seems like one of those low hanging fruit where standardization across distributions would make sense.

Everyone should switch to Portage. It's like a superset of every package manager.

You mean Paludis right (on Exherbo too and not Gentoo which is still stuck in the stone age)?

Paludis does correct dependency resolution while Portage just pretends to.

Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#73
post #2

Serious question, because I am admittedly ignorant to the plusses and minuses of the different package managers. If you're going to swap out: why not switch to apt? What does apt lack that DNF is going to provide? This seems like one of those low hanging fruit where standardization across distributions would make sense.

Everyone should switch to Portage. It's like a superset of every package manager.

The portage ebuild system for describing package dependencies and build procedures is awesome. The portage program for solving dependencies and building packages is mediocre at best—it's slow and too prone to not finding a solution even when the constraints of source compatibility are looser than binary compatibility. The gentoo portage repository of packages is clearly understaffed and orphaned packages are all too easy to run across.

All three of those things have gotten better over the years, and I have little doubt that given the attention and effort that RedHat and Debian package managers get, portage could be a clear winner. But the portage we have now has too many pitfalls to be the best all-around choice.

Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "very slow depsolving" even relevant? In my experience that part of installation and remove is a very small part of the overall installation or removal time and goes by so fast I've never really noticed it. Even if dnf and zypper are 1000x faster than apt there, that alone wouldn't convince me to use them.

> Is "very slow depsolving" even relevant? Try upgrading from major versions and seeing what happens. It's absolutely relevant

In server land, it's more common for machines to be rebuilt from scratch (or at least better to do so).

Given, I understand some people want "servers like pets" and Linux desktop to be a thing, in industrial applications it's usually not an issue.

Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "very slow depsolving" even relevant? In my experience that part of installation and remove is a very small part of the overall installation or removal time and goes by so fast I've never really noticed it. Even if dnf and zypper are 1000x faster than apt there, that alone wouldn't convince me to use them.

Not only that, but it sounds like someone can just add a solver to apt, whereas repackaging the entire linux ecosystem to use a different format is going to be a bit more difficult.

There is apt-cudf which allows to use external solvers (such as aspcud) with apt.

Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#77
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lower the stakes, the stronger the feelings. C.f. text editing.

Given that the package manager is the backbone that makes the Linux distribution (in most cases), it's not low stakes at all.

As long as all of the alternatives work, and they do, it is pretty low stakes. Realistically, how much difference does the choice between yum/dnf/apt-get really make to my everday life installing and upgrading packages? Very, very little.

Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#79
post #54

Linux is a horrible mess. The more I try to do with it, the more the mess reveals itself. Wayland vs X11, Python 2 vs Python 3, init vs systemd, ifconfig vs ip addr, these are all examples where as a new user you have to learn the new and the old system just to be on a level playing field and it's is far, far too much.

Incidentally, what package manager are you using on Windows/OS X?

Re: Yum is dead, long live DNF

#80
post #12
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been better to switch to zypper. Both dnf and zypper use a SAT solver for very fast depsolving. Yum and apt don't and both have very slow depsolving. Zypper also directly supports rpm, and would have unified the package managers on Fedora, OpenSUSE and the enterprise Linux distros RHEL and SUSE.

As far as I can tell the fedora guys wrote libhawkey and dnf to reach some sort of middle ground, as switching to zypper would have implied breaking everything (i.e. all the scripts admins use, rewriting parts of anaconda, etc). The compatibility is not perfect, and in fact a fair amount of people complained (see some discussion on phoronix). As far as the parent post is concerned, to switch to apt would imply switch…

apt-rpm has been around for more than a decade, and was considered for Fedora back in the day (it lost out due to a combination of lack of multilib support back then, and considerations over complexity). Last time I used Fedora it was available in the repository and worked just fine - I always preferred it over yum, despite also preferring RPM over Deb.
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